Gordon Tareta Spills the Tea on Spa Retail

Gordon Tareta is the area director of spas for Marcus Hotels and the founder of spa consulting firm, Tareta Group International. His comment about Sephora particularly resonated with me because when I worked as an esthetician, Sephora was right down the street. I remember the spa owner telling us that it makes no sense for a client to leave our treatment room and purchase the same products somewhere else. Customer service was everything.

“One of the things that makes a successful spa director is the desire to learn and grow and apply what we learn today — apply it tomorrow, or just in that same afternoon.

I think the industry as a whole needs to look outside itself, and look at, what is success in retail? What is success in people development? It’s funny, we get into a lot of these meetings and conferences and we talk about how successful we are, and I think the industry can be many, many times more successful if we take pages from other related industries such as retail, training and development, systems and technology, and apply it to our industry.

For example, I think according to ISPA, there are about 2000 resort spas and hotel based spas, in the United States. The average revenue is about one and a half million dollars per location. And the average retail performance as a percentage of revenue is about 5% – 6% of that spa. But the skin care industry in the United States is 150 billion dollar industry. Everybody else is selling way more than the spa industry is. We have all these experts in aesthetics and massage and we have retail and we have all these suppliers that supply to the retail industry, so why are we so much smaller than the actual skin care sales industry? Sephora alone does more in their revenues than the spa industry does in their retail revenue.

That’s an example of where our potential is huge, but we get so busy talking to ourselves that we forget that there are others that are doing it much better than we are.”

Linda Harding-Bond is shifting the paradigm on spa retail training with "Increasing Your Retail Selling” This system focuses on customer engagement and discerning the guest's needs through skilled listening. It is uniquely designed to develop the inherent skills of introverts-the predominant personality type in the spa and wellness industry.
Retail sales results are immediate and long lasting.
The program is also available as an online training system with remote coaching for managers.
Linda has provided training for Empire Beauty Schools, MSpa International, Six Senses Resorts, Oberoi Group and Goldeneye Resort & Spa.
She is author of The New Esthy Handbook.
Contact her by e-mail for a complimentary consultation- Linda@Moontideconsulting.com .